The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to optimizing discovery of a high resources consuming wireless network resource for a group of mobile communication devices, and, more specifically, to optimizing resources consumption during discovery of a high resources consuming wireless network resource within a group of mobile communication devices.
Availability and distribution of mobile wireless network-enabled devices is rapidly increasing. The wireless network-enabled devices such as, for example, a mobile phone, a tablet, a laptop, a smart watch, a wearable device and the likes are mostly battery powered and hence may have a limited battery capacity, i.e. having limited battery energy and/or battery power. In addition the mobile wireless network-enabled device(s) may have limited processing and/or computation resources. The mobile wireless network-enabled device(s) may support communication over one or more high resources consuming wireless networks such as, for example, wireless local area network (WLAN) also known as Wi-Fi, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), cellular network and the likes. In addition to the ability to connect to the one or more high resources consuming wireless networks, two or more of the mobile wireless network-enabled devices may share another one or more low resources consuming communication links. The low resources consuming communication links may be, for example, Bluetooth low energy (BLE also known as Bluetooth smart), Bluetooth, near field communication (NFC), infra-red (IR), ZigBee and/or Z-Wave.
Constant connection of the one or more network-enabled devices to the one or more high resources consuming wireless networks, and specifically, a network discovery session in which the network-enabled device(s) discovers and/or resolves availability of a network connection to the one or more global networks and/or one or more remote network resources may involve high resources consumption.
Moreover, a scenario in which the network-enabled device(s) are trying to discover availability of the high resources consuming wireless network(s) in a location where there is no coverage for the high resources consuming wireless network(s) may result in excessive battery energy consumption. Unless the high resources consuming wireless network interface of the network-enabled device(s) is manually turned off the network-enabled device(s) may try to automatically discover the high resources consuming wireless network(s) over and over again to no avail.